1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a component mounting apparatus for mounting parts or components such as, preferably, ICs or other electronic parts on boards and also relates to a program for controlling the operation of the apparatus. It further relates to a component mounting system incorporating one or more such apparatus.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Known electronic component mounting apparatus of this kind are of the construction that a single component placing device mounts components supplied from a component supply device, on one board loaded by a single board transfer device, and wherein the component mounting operation is performed on a board-by-board basis. In correspondence to this, a program used in such a component mounting apparatus and a system incorporating such a component mounting apparatus were designed to perform the component mounting operations on a board-by-board basis.
As mentioned above, in the known component mounting apparatus, the program used therefor and the known component mounting system which were designed to perform the component mounting operations on a board-by-board basis, the number of components which could be mounted during unit time period were almost constant. Further, the component mounting operations were discontinued during the transfer operation of the board by the board transfer device. For these reasons, it was difficult to enhance the board productivity.
Further, the production line in actual use were of the construction that plural mounting stations each provided with a component mounting apparatus of the aforementioned construction were connected in series. Therefore, it was often the case that when one mounting station fell in a trouble, the production line came into shutdown as a whole.
Moreover, when a board omitted to mount or missing a component which can be reworked was detected at a board inspection station arranged at the middle of the production line, the component mountings on the board were continued up to mounting the last component for the board, and outside the production line at another time, the component omitted to mount was mounted on the board through a manual reworking or the like. However, this way of reworking the defective board disadvantageously made the production control for the line complicated.